Saturday, February 25, 2012

Painting with Grandma

Today, I spent the day in Jordan, Minnesota painting with my Grandma. My Grandma was a big influence on me as a child as she always encouraged my art. She use to buy me painting/drawing sets every year for Christmas. My brother and myself would often stay over at Grandma's and Grandpas, and she would pull out an art project and we would paint, draw, press leaves, color or some other creative project.

Often times my subject matter in art during my childhood would consist of sports, super heroes or video games characters. None of my work was very traditional. Grandma would insist that I draw birds, flowers or trees and when I made art around my Grandma I was glad to oblige and paint things she enjoyed to see. During our visit today I follow suit and decided to flex my inner Bob Ross for her again and painted her front yard.

Typically, I do not paint landscapes and shy away from traditional subject matter, but it is fun to paint a still life and a nature scenes every once in a while. My dad (who claims not to be artistically talented) came along and did a little watercolor, something he has only a few times before. My dad actually has a lot more skill than he is letting on, he just has not cultivated it yet. Check out one of his watercolor pages.

My Grandma, who does have a lot of artistic skill, painted an apple and this beautiful blue jay.

I also decided to try and paint this very interesting weaved wooden angel. This was a little bit more complicated of a painting than I had time to complete in one afternoon, but I finished it the best I could in the time we had.